Billie Eilish has done it again. Just like her first studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, her sophomore album Happier Than Ever has debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart its first week of release.
The new album sold 238,000 equivalent units, including 153,000 in traditional sales. Of those 153,000 traditional sales, 129,000 were in physical formats (73,000 on vinyl, 46,000 on CD, and just under 10,000 on cassette), with another 24,000 coming via digital downloads, according to Billboard.
.@billieeilish's 'Happier Than Ever' is officially No. 1 on this week's #Billboard200.
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 9, 2021
It's her second career No. 1 album, after 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?' in 2019.
Happier Than Ever has also set another cool record. According to The New York Times, the album had the second-highest vinyl sales week since at least 1991. (SoundScan - the predecessor to MRC Data, which is Billboard’s tracking arm - first began to keep accurate data on music sales in 1991.)
Currently holding the crown of highest vinyl sales is Taylor Swift, who sold 102,000 vinyl copies of evermore when it arrived in the physical format earlier this year. To compare between the two, there were six months to pre-order evermore as the vinyl LP got released long after the album was available digitally. Only three months were available to pre-order Happier Than Ever. However, Eilish offered eight vinyl options of her album, while Swift offered only three evermore options. All in all, the data confirms vinyl is making a significant comeback when it comes to music sales - particularly sales from well-established artists.
This week's top-selling vinyl albums:
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 9, 2021
1. @billieeilish Happier Than Ever
2. @prince Welcome 2 America
3. @bleachersmusic Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night
4. @durand_jones Private Space
5. @leonbridges Gold-Diggers Sound
Teenagers are dominating the top three spots on the Billboard chart. Digging deeper into the Happier Than Ever data, the album - created by 19-year-old Eilish - is currently above 17-year-old The Kid LAROI's F-ck Love (which held last week's #1 spot). It has also further pushed down 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo's chart-reigning debut album Sour to #3. The album was at #2 last week.
Eilish's previous album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, fared very well on music charts back in 2019. It spent a total of three nonconsecutive weeks at the #1 spot on the Billboard 200, and peaked at #1 on several international music charts. It went on to eventually win Album of the Year at the 2019 Grammy Awards. It also holds the record as the most pre-added album on Apple Music, with over 800,000 to its name on the platform.
In other Billie Eilish news, the superstar is set to appear at several music festivals, including this year's iHeartRadio Festival, Firefly Music Festival, Austin City Limits, and Governors Ball. Additionally, Eilish will be embarking on an extensive world tour. Several dates are already sold out, and more information can be found on Eilish's website.
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Article Image: Billie Eilish with new platinum blonde hair posing for "British Vogue" in May 2021. (Alfred Marroquin [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons.)
